There exist some conventional approaches to providing individualized audio to co-located listeners so that each listener hears different audio streams. Traditionally, providing multiple audio streams generally requires that each user is associated with an audio output system, such as headphone, together with some degree of isolation from other user's speaker systems. To illustrate, consider that multiple users typically have their own music players and headphones to enable each user to hear their own music without disrupting others' listening activities. Some drawbacks to this approach are that they typically require individualized sets of hardware and equipment which can be costly.
While functional, conventional echo and noise cancellation techniques, as well traditional cross-talk cancellation, are not well-suited to enhance audio produced on an individualized basis when each of multiple listeners are recipients of different audio streams. For example, conventional echo, noise, and cross-talk cancellation techniques are limited to operating on an audio signal (i.e., limited to a signal audio signal) rather than optimizing audio streams systemically.
What is a desired are a system, an apparatus, and a method for providing independent listener-specific audio streams, such as individualized audio streams, to multiple listeners using a common audio source, such as a set of loudspeakers, the common audio source also configured to provide a shared audio stream.